A village tale

"Once upon a time," I began, "there was a young lady, who was very poor and very sad. She lived in a village where people always laughed and danced and were very happy."

The girls stopped playing with their bath toys and looked at me.

"She was so sad because she didn't have any friends, even though she was surrounded by so many laughing and dancing people. So, she decided to go to sleep and she slept soundly. But her dreams were interrupted by a voice that spoke to her:

'You need to go out into the village, to an inn. You will know the inn. You need to dance and laugh.'

When the sad, young lady awoke, she said:

'Oh, my, I'm hungry!'

So she changed into her tattered best clothes and headed off into the village, straying a little farther than she had ever done before. For, after all that sleep, she was feeling a little brave, too. She walked until she came to an inn. She had come to THE inn.

It was dark inside but the lady could hear the voices of people making merry. She could see some people and one person in particular caught her eye.

'Surely, he is kind,' the lady said to herself, for she had no idea that he was a prince. And when they spoke, the man told her: 'You are a princess. You have a gift. Whenever you speak, your words sound like music. We must be married.'

Oh, how her heart fluttered! And then he said . . ."

"I think he chose the wrong lady," Devyn interrupted.

"What?"

"I think she's old."

The way we read . . .

I like to think that everyone has a reading style. I also like to think that mine is of the read-and-let-read variety. So, when Devyn showed interest in reading the Junie B. series, and I got excited about it, I guess I kind of assumed that she and I shared a reading style. Not so much.

"Hey, let's read a Junie B. book," I suggested this morning.

"O.K.," she bounced up. (At least, I think she bounced because she always bounces and that's my overall impression of her.)

And I actually meant that she would read it and that I would listen which would have been just fine with her except we got stuck at the Junie B. part.

"Here, let's find the first in the series."

"I want to read this one." She held it up to me as if she was holding something very precious which, if you think about it, it really is. Anyway.

"Is that the first one in the series?" I started comparing dates of copyright.

"Uh . . ."

"No, that's not the first one. This one is. It comes before that one, anyway."

She shrugged her whole body in that way that only six-year-olds have learnt to do. I knew what she was going to say . . .

"But I want to read THIS one, not THAT one. THIS is the one I want to read."

We rallied pronouns back and forth until I got caught in the net. It was her book and, ultimately, for her benefit that we would be reading. I couldn't walk away without admitting defeat. But I wasn't happy about it.

A series. It's a series and series are meant to be read sequentially, right? Does it really matter, though, if Devyn doesn't have all the information that would be available in the first book? Wouldn't there be sufficient information, anyway, in the second or third books for her to gather impressions -- however vague -- of what has gone before?

Yes, probably. But it didn't matter, at least not while we were disagreeing.

Yet I realized that we were stepping out of the matter of personal preference and into the morass of mother-child relationships. We weren't negotiating which book would be read first; we were staking territory. This is where my parental rights in the matter ended and I was clearly encroaching. I had the sense that I should not push further despite all that I believed that I had left to teach her in this area.

But I'm not surprised. In fact, I am continually amazed by the capacity of my children to teach me about this life stuff. For example, I know this wasn't the last territorial scuffle.